Documentation conversion status [was: Re: companies contributing to X]

[Jeremy Huddleston]

Thanks a lot for this update and the work in general.  I know it was very difficult for me to get involved, and even now I'm only comfortable in a few corners of X11.  In addition to making it easier for new contributors, this work will make it easier for existing contributors to expand their influence or better integrate newer technologies.  We may actually get around to supporting COMPOSITE and EXA in XQuartz ;)

Thanks,
Jeremy

On Nov 27, 2010, at 15:24, Matt Dew wrote:

> As many of you know, with some guidance from Alan, Gaetan and I have
> been quietly slugging through converting the in-tree documentation to
> docbook/xml.  With the goal of having attractive, usable documentation
> that's easy to edit and generate html,pdf,ps and text, with an
> emphasis on consistency across it all.
> 
> I can speak just to the conversion:
> There are roughly 2200 pages of documentation in the tree, written in
> 5 different formats (SGML, troff, Framemaker, tek, asciidoc)
> by multiple people across multiple years. This means the conversion
> must be done in a couple steps.  One of the purposes of the first step
> is just to get an idea of what has been done so that we can get a list
> of xml tags used in all the docs.  We can then pair down this list to
> remove redundant tags.
> From this smaller list, we'll generate an example document from
> which we can apply tags across all the documents consistently.  The
> xorg.css and Xorg_profile-mode.xsl stylesheets use those xml tags to
> control presentation.
> One thing that some have noticed.  The documentation that has been
> converted is ugly. It has the content but lacks the formatting. That
> is step 2.
> 
> Normal spiel:
> Having consistent documentation that's easy to edit and generate will
> make it easier to create new and update existing documentation as well
> as help new people find information.
> 
> I'm happy to report that this initial conversion is almost done.
> 2000 pages have been converted, with another 200 to go. Step 2 will begin soon.
> 
> Happy Thanksgiving,
> Matt
> _______________________________________________
> xorg-devel at lists.x.org: X.Org development
> Archives: http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel
> Info: http://lists.x.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg-devel